


a familiar darkness

by heeryor_lunboks



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 16:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeryor_lunboks/pseuds/heeryor_lunboks
Summary: The clear sunlight of Nicodranas fades as Caleb follows Yussa up the tower steps.





	a familiar darkness

**Author's Note:**

> A short fill written for [this prompt](https://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/3194.html?thread=881786#cmt881786) over at the kink meme. Mind the tags?

The clear sunlight of Nicodranas fades as Caleb follows Yussa up the tower steps. 

As he climbs and climbs, the air feels thinner, like there is less oxygen in the air, the walls pressing in. Deep in the tower, Caleb can’t smell the salt of the sea air anymore. He hadn’t noticed that he had gotten accustomed to it.

Yussa shows him the teleportation circle, lighting it up with a wave of his hand and flooding the space with unreal arcane light. Asks him where he studied. How long he needs to complete his task. Caleb stumbles through and answers as best he can. He doesn’t know what this man wants from him. He doesn’t know what to do.

Their conversation trails to an awkward halt, and his gorge rises up, choking him with fear. 

But it suddenly seems clear: he only ever had himself to offer.

Caleb sinks to his knees, head bowed, and waits, heatbeat thundering in his chest. 

It is a long moment before he hears the shifting of Yussa’s soft, slippered feet on the stone, before he sees the toes of finely-embroidered shoes come in his view.

“Ah, I see,” Yussa says.

Yussa curls a hand around his jaw. The mere touch of his fingertips leaves prickling static on his skin, like a sleeping limb. Caleb knows that touch, knows the feeling of power sitting so easily and so close to the surface. 

He keeps his gaze down until Yussa tilts his chin up with an impersonal, considering touch, like a buyer examining an animal. Caleb does not flinch. If he is very, very still and very, very good—maybe, just maybe he can get everyone out alive. Maybe even himself.

“Hm. Potential, yes.” Yussa tilts Caleb’s face to one side, and then the other. “Not entirely useless.”

Caleb hates the part of his heart that rises up at the words, a thrill that swells beneath the fear thrumming in his chest. When he was younger, Caleb wondered if this was how some people worshiped gods: fear and awe and submission in the face of a greater power for the chance to survive and perhaps, perhaps to glimpse something terrible and sublime. The warmth and intimacy of Jester and Caduceus’s worship still seems foreign to him.

There is a frightful clarity here, with none of the painful ambiguity of not knowing where the nearest threat might be, none of the waiting. Everything is clear.

Yussa’s face is still unreadable in the pale blue light. There’s no way he can’t feel the thundering of Caleb’s pulse under his fingers, a rabbit caught in a snare. Perhaps it’s unworthy of his notice, too pathetic.

“I can—” Caleb opens his mouth, but the words die in his mouth, turning to ash. Take me, only let the others be safe.

Yussa’s expression doesn’t change, still and implacable as a statue. “What is it you can offer?”

Caleb can’t hold his gaze, darts his eyes towards the sigil, the surrounding walls. “Very little. Someone of your stature has no need of—” He half-gestures to himself helplessly.

“Correct.” 

Yussa’s fingers press hard at the hinge of his jaw, opening his mouth. His thumb presses on Caleb's tongue and hooks behind his teeth, holding the wet rawness of his mouth in his hand. 

He could ignite the air in Caleb’s lungs with a thought.

A second, two. Or maybe an eternity. He doesn’t know time anymore.

Perhaps he has been here for years. Perhaps his friends left long ago, as they should. Perhaps this is where he is forever. There is no longer any fear, because fear is for the unknown, and Caleb knows exactly what he is here.

Yussa removes his hand and wipes it clean on Caleb’s scarf. He turns, waving a hand, and the sigil is quenched. 

There is only darkness, and Caleb is blind, lost, anchored only by the hard stone under his knees. It takes a long moment before his eyes adjust to the dark enough to reveal the faint outline of the door, and longer still before he can find his feet and feel his way along the wall.

He doesn’t know how he gets back downstairs or how they leave—only that he comes back to himself in the intense blue brightness of the Nicodranas sky and the harsh white of the buildings. Someone has a hand on his shoulder. The familiar tug of a spindly hand wound into his breeches. A large, warm hand supporting his elbow. 

As the world comes back, so does the fear, all-consuming.


End file.
